WASHINGTON (AP) – As Donald Trump raged in an Oval Office filled with tense senior aides, he trained his eyes on one in particular: White House Counsel Don McGahn.
During the Friday afternoon tirade, which would spill into a Saturday morning tweetstorm, Trump erupted over his attorney general’s decision to step out of a sensitive investigation on Russian contacts and tangled with his team over how to redo his troubled travel ban. His angriest remarks were reserved for McGahn, who was tasked with making a complex legal case on both fronts to a president concerned about political optics.
But less than 24 hours after being on the receiving end of a Trump smackdown, McGahn was in Florida with his boss at an amiable work session and dinner. The new travel ban the president signed on Monday shows he took the lawyer’s advice to stop pursuing his appeal of the first one.
In a White House that prides itself on defying the system, McGahn often has the unenviable task of defining that system’s parameters. He’s an in-house guardrail for a president who likes to veer out of traditional bounds, and McGahn certainly doesn’t win all of his battles. Yet for far longer than anyone in the White House outside of Trump’s family, McGahn has retained his status of trusted confidant and adviser to a man who isn’t interested in making the job easy.
“Don’s style is such that it avoids having him get sucked into the vortex,” said Leonard Leo, an adviser to the White House on the Supreme Court nomination process and judicial and legal appointments. “He’s not yapping in the president’s ear just for the sake of being close to power. So when they do talk, it’s more meaningful.”